New Mexico has already secured hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties for harm caused to its children while they were online.
But top officials say the companies behind major social media platforms, websites and other services — particularly those using artificial intelligence — must face even harsher penalties and restrictions.
To give more teeth to New Mexico’s laws protecting children and other consumers, Attorney General Raúl Torrez, Democratic nominee for governor Deb Haaland and others plan to push forward legislation that would substantially increase penalties for harms of young people and others, curb addictive and exploitative functions of online platforms, and create a new office designed to investigate violations.
“Implementing these new standards through this legislation will actually create the most robust, I think, framework in the country for holding people accountable,” Torrez said during a news conference in Albuquerque.
The legislation will be sponsored by Rep. Linda Serrato, D-Santa Fe, who said during the news conference that “this legislation not only provides controls but allows our communities to be very thoughtful about how we’re working with AI.”
New Mexico Department of Justice spokesperson Lauren Rodriguez wrote in an email the proposed laws are currently being worked on by legislative bill drafters.
Haaland said if elected, she would work with lawmakers to ensure laws are passed and that the accountability office investigating harms from online services is funded.
“In New Mexico, we are all stepping up. We will lay a solid foundation to help accomplish my commitment to mitigate social media harms to kids,” she said.
The plans to propose the legislation come after a jury in March found that Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — had exposed New Mexico’s children to sexual predators and failed to warn consumers of the dangers of using its platforms. Meta owes the state $942 million, $375 million in civil penalties and $567 million for abatement.
A proposed new law, which would be called the “Online Safety and Accountability Act,” would aim to ensure social media, gaming and other online platforms using artificial intelligence do not cause harm to children, such as by promoting self-harm and eating disorders, harassment, grooming, age-restricted ads and tricks to push kids into buying things.
The law would also curb addictive features for young people, including by imposing a default time limit of two hours, silencing notifications at night or during school, and blocking contact with adult strangers or accounts that extort or groom children.
The bill would also confirm children’s ages using “privacy-preserving methods,” implement parental controls on children’s accounts automatically, and set up a new “Office of the Online Safety Monitor” within the Justice Department designed to investigate violations of the law.
Penalties for violating the law could reach $50,000, and can stack if they are determined to be a “willful violation,” if the platform knew a user who experienced harm was a minor, and if the infraction was a repeat one or defied a court order.
Officials also plan to push forward changes to the Unfair Practices Act that would increase current $5,000 civil penalties to $50,000 per violation. Violators of the act would have to pay up to $50,000 more for repeat violations, defying a court order, or for specifically targeting minors, people with disabilities or those under guardianship.
The legislation would give more teeth to the Justice Department, such as the ability to freeze the assets of people and organizations who violate the act, and to enforce disgorgement — the ability to force such entities to give up profits they made by violating the law. It would also crack down on traps designed by online platforms to make it more difficult for a person to opt out of data tracking and sale and to regulate unwanted calls and texts.
The update to the bill would set up modern penalties for harms caused online, Torrez said, arguing that the Unfair Practices Act is outdated and that if the $5,000 penalties for violating it had been adjusted for inflation, the state would have secured a $3 billion judgment in its trial against Meta, not $375 million.
“That is simply inadequate,” he said, adding it is “also ineffective in terms of deterring the kinds of conduct that we anticipate may arise through artificial intelligence and other big tech companies that are developing new products that present new and novel harms both to our kids and to our consumers.”
Esteban Candelaria is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. He covers child welfare and the state Children, Youth and Families Department. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.
